


Some Things to Think About When You Decide to Be an Asshole

by sutlers



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-08
Updated: 2010-11-08
Packaged: 2017-10-22 00:07:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/231424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sutlers/pseuds/sutlers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve gets high and tries to fuck Danny; things devolve from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Things to Think About When You Decide to Be an Asshole

**Author's Note:**

> As always, thanks to [fallia](http://fallia.livejournal.com) for being on L'Oreal moment patrol. Because _you're_ worth it, bro.

             **1\. unconsidered action**

The Yakuza thing they're working is fucking Steve up pretty bad and Danny can't for the life of him figure out why until after the sting at the restaurant when they haul one of the underbosses in. "I just have a question," Steve says in the interrogation room, halogen lights emphasizing the stark planes of his face. The underboss stares up at him insolently, tapping his half of a right pinkie finger against the desk. "I think you should go, Danny."

"Like hell," Danny says automatically; leaving Steve alone in a room with someone who doesn't fear pain will only mean tears and reams of paperwork. Steve isn't paying attention. He pulls up a chair and starts talking in Japanese, brusquely; the underboss squints at him and appears to make a decision, shrugging.

"Kyoto," he says, then a long string of Japanese that Danny can't understand except for two more words: Victor Hesse. God damn, Danny thinks, watching the dregs of expression bleed out of Steve's face.

"Well that was enlightening," Danny says when they leave. Steve cuts him a look and then Chin and Kono show up,

"Did you learn anything?" Chin asks.

"Nothing we didn't already know," Steve says. Danny stares at him incredulously but doesn't say anything; Steve's back is turned and he makes an abortive gesture at Danny with his hand.

"I am not looking forward to the paperwork on this one," Kono sighs. Filling out forms takes them another two days and wonder of wonders Steve sticks around for it, tapping at his computer with a robotic intensity until Wednesday afternoon rolls around and he asks, "Are we fucking done with this yet?"

"Mostly," Chin says, managing to convey a raised eyebrow without actually moving any of the muscles on his face.

"Great, take the weekend."

"It's Wednesday," Danny points out. Steve tips his head back and places his palms over his eyes. Kono and Chin give Danny identical significant looks and Danny wonders when exactly they had all agreed that sorting Steve out was Danny's responsibility. Danny brings his knuckles to his temple and nods at the both of them.

"Take care of yourself," Chin says, then he and Kono are out the door, leaving Danny alone with Steve, the creak of the walls and the whirr of the server fan.

"If I see you in the next 48 hours," Steve says steadily, "I will shoot you."

"Scary," Danny says. He spends the next few minutes moving around the office, shuffling papers and powering down hardware. He takes a few steps in Steve's direction and stops; Steve tenses. Danny turns away but turns back at the door, searching Steve for something he can work with. Steve gives him nothing; "Later," Danny says, frustrated, and leaves.

 

***

He finds himself lurking around outside of Steve's house in a couple of hours anyway, still pissed off. The front door is unlocked; Danny trips on Steve's shoes in the foyer and swears quietly, then shouts up the stairs, "I know you're up there, McGarrett, I can see the light from your window," and "If you've gone and blown your own brains out I am seriously going to fucking kill you." He bangs open the door with the light shining underneath it and stops short; Steve is sprawled over a tiny shitty twin bed, eyes wide and surprised, a blanket thrown haphazardly over the lower half of his body.

"I'm not dead," he says, blinking slowly. Danny takes a deep breath, ready to start yelling, which is when he smells it.

"Are you—" He pinches the bridge of his nose. "You are a fucking menace."

"I'm pretty sure I said something about shooting you."

"If you're in this room with a gun then I swear to God—"

"Danny," Steve says, spreading his empty hands. Danny counts to ten in his head and exhales. Steve stares at him with exaggerated fascination as he makes his way across the room, and swallows when Danny braces himself on the headboard and picks up the ashtray next to Steve's hip on the other side of the mattress.

"Move over," Danny mutters, and Steve complies instantly, cramming himself up against the wall. "Did you make this?" Danny asks, inspecting the lumpy clay in his hand. "It's really ugly."

"Mrs. Mahelona said it was okay if I wasn't very artistically oriented."

"I'm just enjoying the physical evidence that you aren't obscenely proficient at everything you try to do."

"What are you doing?" Steve asks when Danny sits down on the bed next to him, mattress creaking. There's not really room for two grown men on it but Steve's weight against Danny's side isn't uncomfortable. Danny picks up the joint.

"I'm not about to let you have a one-man clam bake and pity party."

"I'm not having a pity party."

"What is it, then?" Danny takes a long drag, holding it in his lungs while he takes in Steve's room; it's obviously his old room from when he was younger, football memorabilia stuck to the walls and scattered over the counters, pictures stuck to a cork board over a dusty desk. Danny recognizes Steve in some of them, and Mary, an older man who had to have been their father. Other people Danny doesn't know; he wonders where they all are. Danny coughs when he exhales and swears, settling in more comfortably. Steve doesn't say anything.

"Hey—" Danny starts.

"I'm going to Japan," Steve says.

"Yeah," Danny says, biting back a laugh. His focus is already tunneling and it's getting harder to breathe, tie constricting every inhalation. He yanks half-heartedly at the knot and adds, "I hope you don't think you're going by yourself."

"Are you going to chase me down?"

"Me and the whole team." Steve's fingers tangle with Danny's own so Danny drops his hand to his thigh; Steve isn't much more adept but he's attacking the knot with single-minded concentration, brow furrowed, knuckles knocking against Danny's throat. "I mean, I'm sure it's going to be a jurisdictional nightmare but I was thinking I'd really like to see you get into a pissing contest with Interpol, it'd be—"

Knot undone, Steve's hand slides down Danny's chest and then back up, curving over Danny's jaw. "—hilarious?" Danny finishes against Steve's mouth. Steve takes advantage of Danny's surprise and slips his tongue past Danny's teeth, kissing him open and desperate and dirty.

"Fuck, what?" Danny gasps when Steve transfers his attention to Danny's jaw, licking along it in a hot stripe, down Danny's neck and kissing the hollow of Danny's throat, where the buttons on Danny's collar are undone. Steve's hands scrabble at Danny's shirt, yanking it out of Danny's pants and sliding underneath. His hands are hot, too, just as hot as his mouth, and Danny can feel the last traces of his rationality being smothered under the intensity of sensation.

" _Steve_ ," he says.

"I have to—" Steve mumbles, unrelenting.

"Steve," Danny says again, " _McGarrett._ " Once he's grasped the thought again it's easier to hold on to, so he focuses on that while he pushes at Steve's shoulders, ignoring the way Steve's hips are moving against his thigh, his own cock hard and straining against the material of his pants.

"Danno," Steve says, voice cracking on the last syllable, but he stills under Danny's hands.

"You have to stop that right now," Danny says, petting Steve's hair distractedly while he waits for his own chest to stop heaving. Long minutes later Steve curls in on himself, curls in on Danny, incredibly heavy, but Danny finds he doesn't mind until he finally drifts off to sleep and then wakes up in a dark room with Steve gone.

 

***

Chin runs a trace on Steve's passport and they find that Steve has well and truly fucked off, passing through customs in Osaka International about 11 hours after Danny last saw him. "He went where?" Kono asks, glaring at the computer screen.

"Japan," Danny says. She whirls on him.

"Did you know something about this?"

"Sort of?"

Kono smacks him upside the head. "I'm going to hurt you. But Steve first. Something facially disfiguring."

"Dibs," Danny mutters.

"Rock-paper-scissors."

"You're gonna lose, brah," Chin observes. Danny swivels around in his chair and smacks his fist into his palm three times, rock, and Kono's hands come together flat. She makes a triumphant noise and hits Danny again, in the shoulder; "Jesus," Danny says, rubbing the spot. He spends the next five minutes telling them everything he knows, which isn't much, and it takes them another hour to reluctantly conclude that there's no way they're going to find Steve if he doesn't want to be found, an ocean away.

"Fuck," Kono says furiously. Danny scrubs his hands over his face.

"Someone should tell Mary," Chin says.

"I'll do it," Danny says, pushing himself out of the chair. He spends several long seconds staring at his own reflection in the window of his car, warped and washed-out. The knot of his tie rests against a tender spot on his collarbone that twinges every time he shifts. "Fuck," he repeats, aborting the movement of his fingers toward it, and gets in.

"Danno," Mary says behind the counter at Kamekona's. Danny spares a moment to be irritated that apparently Kamekona can fit his face on a scrap of a babydoll t-shirt before he says, "Do you have a second?"

"Oh," Mary says out back, poking her spoon into her cup of shaved ice. "Well, Steve has always been kind of weird about Dad."

"He’s weird about everything," Danny mutters. Mary shrugs, offering him her spoon.

 

***

The next few days are slow. Danny catches up on a lot of paperwork and tries not to spend too much time thinking. He gets Grace for two days and they spend nearly all of the time at the beach with Kono and Chin and Mary: "No surfing," Danny says, which backfires on him spectacularly when Kamekona shows up with his girlfriend and offers to teach Grace how to sumo wrestle. "Oh my god," Danny moans, watching his baby girl try to bodycheck a 400-pound guy into the sand, "he could trip and break every bone in her body."

"See, new things are fun and exciting," Kono says. Kamekona falls over theatrically and Grace laughs, high and delighted.

"Terrifying," Danny says.

"Where's Steve?" Grace asks sleepily in Danny's lap when the sun is hanging low over the water and the smells from the barbecue start to drift temptingly over the sand.

"He's taking a trip," Danny says, exhausted contentment evaporating. "For work."

"That's stupid," Grace says, knocking her fist against Danny's chest. It always blows him away how much he loves her, so he squeezes her tight until she makes a soft noise of complaint and lifts her head. Mary and Kono are conspiring to keep Chin away from the grill by main force. "But I don't like it still bloody and twitching," Chin whines.

"Tough cookies, baby," Mary says while Kono mimes crying a single crystal tear.

"This sucks," Chin says, flopping down next to Danny.

"Yep," Danny says. Two weeks later they get a ping on Steve's passport coming back into Honolulu and Danny stares at the screen in disbelief before shouting at Kono and Chin; they all make it to the airport just in time to catch Steve coming out of the gate. He looks surprised to see them, resigned—bags under his eyes like he hasn't slept the whole time he's been gone. Kono wraps her arms around him and then pulls back and punches him in the face.

"Don't look at me, paper beats rock," Danny says, arms crossed. Steve looks away quickly, holding his jaw, and all the rage Danny has been suppressing bubbles to the surface. "I have so many things I want to yell at you about I don't even know where to start."

"Can we—" Steve says, "not?" Danny narrows his eyes.

"Later," he says.

Danny lets Kono bully the Japan story out of Steve, which is ridiculous and complicated and ultimately very anticlimactic, involving the expatriated widow of one of Steve's buddies from his unit and her sister, who does something that Danny doesn't understand and doesn't really want to understand for the—

"What?" Danny says.

"Aizukotetsu-kai," Steve and Kono say again in stereo. "Keep going," Kono says.

And basically what happened was Steve finally caught Victor Hesse hiding out with his pants down at a Japanese brothel and shot him twice to make sure he was really dead, stayed two extra days to make nice with the police and the oyabun, and now he was back.

"Great," Danny says, "now what?"

"I need about three days of sleep," Steve says, fumbling with his car keys.

"Fine," Danny says, snatching them away.

 

***

It hadn't taken Danny very long to realize that he was abnormally invested in this partnership with Steve, but it did take him a while to figure out how he felt about it, which was generally all right—Steve is kind of a psychotic prick but he's also a good guy, a good person in ways that are both momentous and somehow perpetually surprising. It's hard to get a read on him sometimes, but Steve has become a constant presence in Danny's life, and Danny knows to appreciate consistency when he finds it, no matter what form it takes.

 

***

Manhandling Steve into the truck is a whole other set of issues; the way Danny's hands catch on the fabric of Steve's t-shirt and the heat of Steve's skin through it—it's the only thing Danny remembers clearly from the night before Steve left, Steve's body like a furnace on top of him. Steve falls asleep against the window and Danny watches the road, embarrassed and uncomfortable on top of being pissed off, never a good combination.

"Time to get up, Sleeping Beauty," Danny says when he pulls into Steve's driveway. Steve jerks and looks around, disoriented, before mumbling his thanks and stepping out. Danny follows him into the house and notes the moment Steve realizes he's done it; Steve's shoulders come up around his ears, defensively.

"You need something, Danny?"

"Yeah, for you to explain why the _fuck_ you thought what you did was okay."

"It won't happen again."

"Of course it won't happen again, not in this particular permutation at least, because you killed the guy, but—"

"I meant, the thing. I was fucked up, it won't happen again."

"The—oh, now we're talking about how you got high and tried to stick your hand down my pants. Because yeah, that was kind of a surprise, I'm not going to lie." Steve winces at every word that comes out of Danny's mouth and Danny starts to feel bad, so he stops, trying to gather his thoughts.

"I get kind of." Steve waves his hand. "When I'm baked."

"Jesus Christ, McGarrett, help me out here. You have to tell me what's going on in your head, I can't read your fucking mind."

"I wanted to—" Steve shrugs, then flinches when Danny says, "Fuck me?"

And Danny's never been one for taking unconsidered action, that's all Steve, but these past few months have been a terrible influence on him because he adds, insanely, "Okay."

"What?"

"Okay, fuck me." On some level Danny knows he isn't being fair; Steve is obviously jet-lagged and not firing on all pistons, but another part of him couldn't give two fucks. He has never— _never_ —met anyone capable of pushing all of his goddamn buttons at once this way, and that includes Rachel. Steve looks stunned, and exhausted, a white-knuckled grip on the kitchen chair he is bracing himself with. "Well?" Danny says.

Steve groans and takes two steps forward, caging Danny in against the wall. Danny has time for a half-second flicker of regret before Steve stoops to kiss him, thirsty, like he wants to drown in it, lips airplane-chapped. Danny's hands come up to circle Steve's waist. "Steve," he says when Steve pulls back, and in one smooth motion drops to his knees, eyes on Danny's the whole time.

Steve works Danny's pants open clumsily and swallows Danny down whole, nose against Danny's belly, breathing hard. Danny swears and knocks his head against the wall, impact and sensation whiting out his vision for a second. Steve back off and then just plunges down again, and again, hands pinning Danny's hips to the wall; Fucking SEALS, Danny thinks irrationally, bringing one hand up to cup the back of Steve's head, Steve's hair soft and sweaty against his fingers. Everything Steve does feels designed to drive Danny right out of his mind, Steve's tongue flicking against the slit of his cock, Steve's fingers sliding back to rub against the spot behind his balls.

"Oh fuck, Steve," Danny gasps, embarrassingly soon, trying to give some kind of warning, but Steve just stays down and works him through his orgasm, throat contracting around Danny's cock. There's come smeared around his mouth when Danny joins him on the floor; he kisses Steve hard, once, no tongue and Steve's hips jerk against his palm. "Fuck, you are really hot for this, aren't you?" he mutters unthinking, unzipping Steve's pants. He hardly has a moment to appreciate the weirdness of someone else's dick in his hand before Steve comes all over him, messy, wrecked.

"That was—"

"You should go now," Steve says tonelessly, stretching his legs out.

"I need to—" Danny says, "right," and walks unsteadily out the door.

 

***

             **2\. like a house on fire**

Danny takes Steve's truck home because he left his own car at HQ and gets started fixing his dinner, searing the pork chops in the pan while he works through a minor gay freakout. It's not as bad as it could be, because it is overshadowed by the conviction that he has just fucked up his life really spectacularly. "Holy shit," he says, sitting down hard on one of the chairs at his tiny kitchen table. The pork chops start smoking in the pan before he gets up again, so he runs around for five minutes opening windows and trying to shut the fire alarm off. It screeches insistently at him until he gives up and rips out a bunch of wires, breathing hard.

Danny gets away with a lot of shit when it comes to Steve, like eating Steve's food and breaking into his house, all of the yelling they do at each other. People who have just met Danny tend to think he's reckless but Danny knows he really isn't: he's just good at figuring out where the real boundaries are, what's actually off-limits and what can be worked around, when to push and when he really should have backed the fuck off for the sake of everyone involved, because Jesus Christ, he just let Steve McGarrett suck his dick.

 

***

Steve doesn't come in to work the next day; "Was he doing okay? When you dropped him off?" Kono asks, frowning down at Danny.

"Just. Jetlagged," Danny says.

"Mm," Kono says. "That shit's been hanging over him for a while, I guess."

The next day they get a call about an arson at a new housing development on Ewa Beach and when they pull up to the smoking husk of a condo Steve is already there, on the phone with the governor; he nods at Danny and Danny is blindsided by perfectly vivid memory of Steve's lips stretched around his cock. He blinks it away while Steve finishes talking and slides his phone into his pocket.

"What have we got?" Steve asks.

Danny clears his throat. "I think, since we got that nice little letter claiming responsibility, we might want to talk to the ELF first."

"You think?"

"No need to get smart with me, young man." Steve smirks at Danny and makes an exaggeratedly chivalrous motion at his car, leaving Chin and Kono to canvass the neighborhood, and they’re flying down the highway before Danny can work himself up to saying, "Look, that shit I said—"

"It’s fine."

"On what planet—okay, no, it’s not fine and I didn’t mean it, so. I’m sorry."

"Apology accepted so can we please," Steve tightens his grip on the steering wheel and yanks the car around a turn; Danny has to brace himself on the ceiling. "Forget it ever happened?"

"You want to forget that—"

"Yes," Steve says. He jerks the car into park in front of the building that houses ELF headquarters and waits, eyes forward. "Please," he adds. "Look, it doesn't have to be a thing."

Danny closes his mouth and clenches his fist, thinking: the truth is, he doesn't have a clue what he actually wants to say. But one thing he does know is that he has already been an asshole about this once and look where that got them so he says,

"Okay."

Steve rolls his shoulders like he’s shaking something off, face easing. _Okay_ , Danny thinks, exhaling. "Okay, Danno, let’s go terrorize some elves."

"Just let me put on my Balrog hat." The sullen pimple-faced kid at the front desk directs them to the offices in the back, where a paunchy older guy in birkenstocks and what has to be one of the most obnoxious shirts Danny has ever experienced denies all knowledge of the attack; "That sort of thing," he says, tilting forward, "tends to not be received well."

"Burning down someone's house; I would imagine no," Danny says. But they get nowhere with that lead and when they walk out, Danny is pretty sure he sees the front desk kid shoot him a covert finger.

 

***

Things go back to normal after that—a certain value of normal, anyway. They don't talk about it and it's easy enough not to. There's plenty of work to keep everyone occupied with the arson thing especially when the second condo goes up with people inside of it and someone leaks the story to the media,

"The Honolulu PD," Danny ends up telling about a dozen microphones, blinded by flashbulbs, "has no reason to believe that these fires are the work of the Earth Liberation Front."

"But what about the threats?" someone asks, "Don't you think you should investigate—"

"We don't generally make the habit of pursuing avenues of inquiry that have been rendered moot by subsequent evidence."

"That was tactful," Steve says after. Danny flips him the bird.

"That was fun. And I don't see you up there, Barack Obama."

"You know what's going to be even less fun," Chin says, pulling up a screen on the computer. Arresting an entire firefighting squad isn't as bad as it could be; the fire department itself catches most of the flak for hiring the psychos in the first place and after it blows over the whole task force ends up getting invited to one of the governor’s fundraising balls. Which means Danny gets to be mistaken for a waiter a bunch of times, eat some truly disgusting finger foods, and get drunk on some really expensive champagne when Steve shows up with Lieutenant Catherine Rollins in a sequined periwinkle dress on his arm. Chin brings Mary.

"Normally I’m a margaritas-from-the-pitcher kind of girl," Mary says to Danny, who didn’t think to bring a date, "but I’m not going to miss the opportunity to dress in something sparkly and get trashed on the governor’s dime."

"That’s class," Danny says.

"You know it," Mary says. She waves. "Hey, Cath!"

"Mary Mary quite contrary," Catherine says. She sticks her hand out. "I don't think we've been formally introduced."

"This is Danny Williams," Mary singsongs. "He’s from New Jersey. He’s Steve’s partner."

"No shit," Catherine says. "I’m Catherine Rollins. I'm from the USS Enterprise. I'm Steve's booty call."

"God, it’s disgusting," Mary says.

"Face it, sweetheart, your brother is a stone fox." She makes a complicated, incomprehensible hand gesture.

"Really?" Danny says, squinting.

"Do you have eyes? It's totally a love connection."

"What is?" Steve asks, coming up on Danny's six with no warning. A distinguished-looking older guy with a military bearing is trailing after him.

"My new relationship with that adorable little man with the neverending supply of champagne flutes, look, he's coming for me. My love," Catherine says loudly, linking her arm through Mary's and dragging her off.

"Hey thanks for—the things you did. Helping," Danny says belatedly after her. Steve clears his throat.

"This is Sam Anderson, he's the head of internal affairs in the HPD. Danny Williams."

"Sir," Danny says, shaking hands.

"I was in the service with Steve's father," Anderson says. "I just wanted to say, it's a hell of a thing you boys did. It's not easy, bringing down people who are supposed to be serving the public. You can catch a lot of shit for it. Makes you doubt yourself."

Danny raises his eyebrows at Steve behind Anderson but Steve just shrugs, mouthing 'humor him.' "Yes sir," Danny says, leading Anderson to launch into a twenty-minute anecdote about his third year on the force when they'd caught his partner soliciting prostitutes—he pronounces it "perrossitutes"—and Danny stops listening about a minute and a half in. Instead he looks at Steve, who looks like he always looks, tall and irritated and mildly psychotic. Normal. When Anderson finally leaves, Danny scans the dance floor and sees Chin twirling Mary around, who's laughing, and—"Is that Kono dancing with that screwball ME? If we're going to be generous and call it dancing."

"At least it's not that little prick of an oceanographer kid," Steve says.

"Yeah," Danny says.

 

***

It's not that Steve isn't hot, objectively, maybe, it's just that Danny doesn't usually go for people like Steve. Danny wouldn't say he has a type, exactly, but if he did Steve would not be it—having a thing with Steve would have too much potential to go wrong in unexpected and unique ways, and Steve was right: they were better off forgetting about it.

 

***

Lieutenant Catherine Rollins ships off with minimal fuss, a kiss on the cheek for Steve and Mary, handshakes for everyone else. She has quite the grip on her, Danny thinks, opening and closing his hand a few times.

They get a brief respite before two murders and a drugs bust in so many weeks knocks everyone on their asses. The thing about police work is that it's never routine—Danny will always be surprised by the shit some people try to pull, the new and creative ways that they will come up with to hurt each other. In the second week Mary starts coming by the office; "You here to see Steve?" Danny asks. Whatever is in the bag she is carrying smells amazing.

"I'm here to see all my favorite people," she chirrups, setting the bag down on Chin's desk and punching Steve in the arm. "Eat some of that," she points. "All of you. Hey, Danno."

"Hey," Danny says. Chin starts pulling greasy takeout containers out of the bag and distributing them. Steve tries to take his box back to his office but Mary vetoes that loudly; they compromise with everyone following Steve and settling in with their own files on their knees or on the arms of their chairs. Danny watches Steve type with one hand and shovel food into his mouth with the other, watches to make sure Steve eats, then keeps watching; Mary catches him at when he's run out of excuses and twitches her eyebrows up, but then settles back into the crook of the couch and closes her eyes. Kono is already asleep.

Later Danny gets up to take a piss and sees Chin and Mary talking softly in the hallway, kissing with a distracted familiarity, Chin's right hand buried in the mass of Mary's hair. Danny blinks and backs out, and when Chin comes back crosses his arms and says,

"McGarrett's sister, huh." Chin looks at him, startled, then smiles. "There is no way that could go horrifically and painfully wrong for you."

"Mary can handle Steve," Chin says.

"Oh, that's real supportive of you."

Chin lifts a shoulder. "Sometimes people can't handle stuff by themselves, and sometimes they can. Mary can handle Steve."

"Hey, the lab just got back to us with the results on the autopsy," Kono says, walking in.

"Ooh, from your boyfriend?" Danny says. Kono snorts.

"Mind your own business, Danno," she says.

 

***

Danny's having a hard time forgetting about it.

 

***

             **3\. operating heavy machinery**

"Why don't we ever go over to Steve's house anymore?" Grace asks when Danny gets her for the weekend. "I like it there, he lives on the beach."

"We're on the beach right now," Danny says.

"Whatever, _Dad_ ," Grace says, kicking her foot and sending up a spray of sand.

"What is this, are you some kind of beach connoisseur now? A sand snob? Too many tan bits, not enough beige bits?" Danny picks up two handfuls and pretends to inspect them, then dumps them over Grace's head to make her shriek and giggle.

When he drives Grace back to the mansion on Sunday he stands at the gate and pulls stupid faces until Grace is back inside, then makes a split-second decision and pushes the buzzer. "What is it, has she forgotten something?" Rachel asks, static sprinkling her voice.

"No I just," Danny says, "did you want to get breakfast or something sometime?" There's a noise and then Rachel says,

"I'm married, Danny," at the same time that Darth Vader says, "I don't think that would be a good idea, Detective Williams."

"Does this jackass like, live here?" Danny says.

"He's Stan's friend," Rachel says. "Bugger off, Harold." There's another pause, this one long enough for Danny to start regretting opening his fat mouth, and then Rachel says, "All right, I'll meet you tomorrow." Rachel shows up for their breakfast looking movie-star glamorous in a little seafoam-green wraparound sundress; she's cut her hair, Danny realizes, since she's married Stan, a glossy brown bob that makes her look years younger.

"You look really good," he says when she sits down.

"Mimosa," she says. "You look like crap, darling."

"How is Grace, um," Danny says, and Rachel takes pity on him and starts talking vaccinations and school projects, the rabbit's habit of crapping on everything that sits still long enough, teachers and sleepovers and Grace's plans for her Halloween costume—Danny has heard almost all of it from Grace already but it's nice to hear Rachel talk; he'd forgotten how much he'd liked it, how in love with her he'd been once. "Why did we get divorced?" Danny asks plaintively.

"I was under the impression it was because you were a bit of an enormous selfish wanker." Danny buries his head in his hands. Rachel sips her drink. "Don't take this the wrong way," she says finally, "but do you have cancer?"

"What? No."

"Because it looks like you're trying to work yourself up to some kind of deathbed apology—"

"Why would you think—no, look, I am sorry, but—"

"See, was that so bloody hard?" Rachel asks. Danny snaps his mouth shut and they glare at each other. Rachel drops her gaze first and blots at her mouth with her napkin. "I am also sorry," she says, meeting his eyes again.

"Fuck," Danny says. He remembers their first meeting, a little dive in Newark; Rachel had spilled her Irish coffee down his newly laundered uniform and laughed, then slapped her hand over her mouth, contrite. She had been a good friend, good sex; maybe if Danny recognized that earlier he could have saved them a lot of grief. But then he wouldn't have Grace, and, looking at Rachel's bemused half-smile, it isn't like the situation was completely unsalvageable.

"So," Rachel says. "Are you seeing anyone new?"

"No," Danny says.

 

***

"Hey, Danno," Mary says, opening Steve's door. Danny blinks and regroups.

"Is Steve here?"

"No, my shower broke so he's at Home Depot with Chin pretending to be a man. Actually," she slides her hand over her mouth. "Can I talk to you? About Steve?"

"Uh," Danny says. He follows Mary into the kitchen where she sits down in front of a laptop with a bunch of pictures on it, copies of what look like police reports and warrants, photographs.

"Steve is—" Mary says, "Steve is like Dad, sometimes, and I think they lose their good judgment when it comes to their friends sometimes, and I was looking through all of Dad's stuff from the toolkit and I think that you should really take a look at it—"

"Hold on," Danny says, "what?"

Which is how Danny ends up breaking into Sam Anderson's office later that evening, a safe combination from Mary's files written on his hand, and also how he ends up getting the shit beaten out of him and shooting two dirty cops, one of whom he was pretty sure was somehow related to Chin. When the ambulance arrives and Steve with it—new face, Danny notes, pressing the ice pack to his forehead; he thinks he'll call this one 'triple hernia'—the screaming starts in earnest. Unexpectedly, it's mostly Mary who is screaming.

"—because you were going to fucking _do_ anything about it, shithead, God, you're exactly like Dad! It's like the most fucked kind of selective blindness I've ever seen! And _you_ ," she rounds on Chin, "fuck your family, and fuck your stupid internalized guilt complex and the way you just let all of them except Kono _fuck you_ —"

She stops when Kono pulls her into a hug, whispers " _fuck_ ," and squeezes back. "I should have told you," she mumbles, "I didn't know if you were going to be as dumb as your stupid cousin. I'm sorry you got shot, Danny."

"No big," Danny manages. Steve is abruptly in his line of vision.

"You—"

"In my defense, I thought no one was going to be there," Danny says.

"You still—"

" _And_ ," Danny says, "for your sake, I thought I would try to get some hard evidence before I started flinging wild accusations at your Uncle Sammy, which, by the way, I have successfully procured, did you know there's a judge in on this shit too—"

"Danno," Steve says, touching the bandage on Danny's arm. His hand trembles, almost imperceptibly. Danny tilts his head.

"Hey, drive me home, will you? I'm not supposed to operate heavy machinery."

Steve stares at him, opening and closing his mouth a few times like he wants to say something but thinking better of it. Finally he decides on, "Okay." Behind him, Kono transfers Mary to Chin, who still looks a little shellshocked.

 

***

Part of the reason his marriage failed, Danny knows, is that after a while he started taking the easy way out. Excuses were easy to make; it was the job, long hours and work that saved lives, she knew what she was getting into when she married him. He didn't think about the fact that he'd only started clocking the overtime after things had already started falling apart, when he was avoiding the real issues, when he was being a fucking coward.

 

***

Danny gives Steve the rundown of what happened on the way back to his place, talking loudly and quickly in the cab of Steve's truck while Steve mostly grunts and asks a few clarifying questions. "Come inside and make me a coffee," Danny says when they pull in. "You can have a beer," he adds at Steve's disbelieving look.

"I'm pretty sure a coffee maker doesn't count as heavy machinery," Steve says after a pause, but he follows Danny inside anyway. He stands at the sink filling the coffee pot with water while Danny rummages around in the fridge until he finds the beer Steve likes stashed in the back.

"Hey," Danny says, straightening up. Steve's eyes meet his a second later. "You and Catherine, is that like a thing?"

"What?"

"Like a thing." Danny waves his free hand around.

"We're uh," Steve says, "friends."

"Okay, what about you and me?" Steve blanches. "See, what the fuck is that? Because I am going to tell you, I have been trying to figure that out and there is not a single explanation that makes sense in my mind. I'm pretty sure it's not that you don't want to have sex with me, because you—" Danny takes a breath, slightly lightheaded from the painkillers and the rate at which his heart is pounding.

"I don't want to fuck up our working relationship," Steve says.

"What working relationship?" Danny asks. "Because this relationship, this one right here, is really not working for me now. I don't fucking like it. Would you—come here, you, I," Danny is the one who steps forward, setting the beers down and hooking a hand behind Steve's neck and pulling him down into a close-mouthed kiss. "You want it," Danny says with less confidence than he would like. Steve has his hands splayed on the counter on either side of Danny's hips.

"I don't want you doing me any favors," Steve says, nostrils flaring.

"Yeah, it's such a goddamn hardship to have your hot mouth wrapped around my dick—"

"You left—"

"You told me to go!" Danny shouts. "And, you left first, plus I may have been freaking out a little, I was,"

"My um, hot mouth?" Steve says, listing in.

"Fuck you, asshole, you know what you look like," Danny says. Steve kisses him again then and this time it gets hot and nasty quickly, Steve's tongue fucking Danny's mouth and Danny's hands plucking at Steve's t-shirt; "Off, off," Danny mumbles and Steve obeys, yanking it over his head and hesitating, chest heaving, waning sunlight tinting his skin golden. "What are you waiting for, McGarrett, do you want me to tell you you're the prettiest girl in the seventh grade? Get—"

They stumble over to Danny's pull-out and fall over onto it. Danny hisses at the jostling of his bruises but Steve pushes at Danny's shirt, toes his own boots off and wriggles out of his pants until he's completely naked, kissing Danny's chest, the barest hint of teeth. The sheer force of Danny's arousal surprises him, the way it sneaks up on him and overwhelms him, a tidal wave. He can't remember ever being this desperate for somebody.

He flips Steve over and sits on Steve's hips, their cocks rubbing together, listening to Steve's groan go straight to his balls. "You have to, you have to tell me what you want," Danny says.

"I can't," Steve pants, "I can't," whining when Danny wraps his hand around both their dicks and starts jerking, rubbing his thumb through the precome leaking from them.

"What do you mean, you can't, do you want to fuck me or do you want me to fuck you, do you want me to suck your dick, McGarrett, _Steve_ , what's—" Steve makes this indescribable noise, thrusting his hips up, digging his fingers into Danny's thighs hard enough to bruise.

"I can't, you, everything, I want everything,"

"Then fuck me, because I don't know if I can coordinate, in the bedside drawer." Danny reaches over to yank it open and press condoms and lube into Steve's hand. They roll over again, Steve kissing his throat, his jaw. "Oh fuck," Danny says when Steve starts working fingers into him, pushing back against Steve's hand, adjusting to the stretch.

"Danny," Steve says, sliding home, arms shaking with the strain of not moving, sweat beading his upper lip. Danny curls up to lick it off even though his bruised ribs creak in protest, kissing Steve's mouth, bearing down on Steve's cock.

"Move," Danny says, and when Steve finally does, "that's good, that's good, that's amazing—Steve."

 

***

They get about an hour of dozing against each other before Steve's phone buzzes from the floor and Steve comes awake, tensing. Danny runs blunt fingernails up Steve's back to feel him shudder and turns his head. "The governor—" Steve starts.

"So help me, if you flip out right now," Danny says.

"I'm not flipping out," Steve says, unconvincingly. He puts his fingers on the lump on Danny's head, and then on the bruising on Danny's ribs, careful.

"Because I'm tired, and I'm sore as fuck, but this is the best I've felt in weeks so I'd like to hold on to that feeling for a longer, possibly indefinitely, if that's okay."

"That's probably just the painkillers."

"No," Danny says. Steve smiles.


End file.
